Tag Archives: Television

January 6, 2015 – Marvel’s Agent Carter Premieres on ABC

“It’s just…during the war I had a sense of purpose, responsibility. But now, I connect the calls, but I never get a chance to make them. Do you know what I mean?”

On January 6, 2015, the live-action television series Marvel’s Agent Carter premiered on ABC. The series was based on the character of Peggy Carter from the Captain America film series, which in turn was based on the Marvel comic book series. It was set right after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, with the timeline of right after World War II, and shared continuity with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show aired for two seasons, for a total of eighteen episodes; although it achieved high critical praise, viewership declined, and the show was cancelled at the end of the second season. It starred Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, James D’Arcy as Edwin Jarvis, Chad Michael Murray as Jack Thompson, Enver Gjokaj as Daniel Sousa and Shea Whigham as Roger Dooley.

The series begins in 1946’s New York City, with Agent Peggy Carter remembering the moment when she lost the love of her life, Steve Rogers (also known as Captain America). She reads the newspaper to find that her friend Howard Stark has been wanted for questioning in regards to the sale of weapons-grade technology to enemies of the United States. She continues to recall her life as she cleans up her apartment. She is greeted by friend Colleen, who urges Peggy to go out and start dating again, unaware of Peggy’s real occupation as an agent of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). Peggy heads into work, and refuses to let her boss, Roger Dooley, assign her to phone duty. There, the agents are briefed more on Howard Stark, and his fall from grace. Six of Stark’s inventions have shown up on the black market, and he’s been branded as a fugitive from justice. Peggy objects to this, knowing her friend is not a traitor, but Dooley refuses to listen. Fellow agent Daniel Sousa stands up for Peggy when another agent makes a misogynistic comment about her, although she isn’t pleased, because she can handle it herself. The rest of the staff treats her like a secretary, but Peggy won’t let that phase her.

Peggy goes to a local diner, where she sees her waitress friend Angie. She then finds a mysterious note on her table telling her to head to the alley in five minutes, and there she finds a mysterious stranger who plans to take her, but Peggy defends herself, only to find that it’s her friend Howard Stark and his butler, Edwin Jarvis. Stark asserts his innocence, saying that he has a secret vault where he stashes his “bad babies,” the inventions he doesn’t even trust with his friends. While he was in Monaco, his vault had been broken into, with the inventions then ending up on the black market. He asks Peggy to clear his name, as he wants to find the person who did this, and he trusts her more than anyone. He offers her a “mission that matters,” and she is intrigued by the offer. Stark then leaves to retrieve some of his “bad babies,” and warns her that another will end up in New York the next day before leaving her in the care of his butler, Jarvis.

The next day, Peggy sets to work on her new mission, and provides Agent Sousa with some false information about Stark hating water to drive him off the trail. Sousa lets her know that Thompson is working on a lead from club owner Spider Raymond, with a team going in undercover. She asks for a sick day to deal with “ladies things,” which she is reluctantly granted by Dooley. That night, the deal for Stark’s invention goes down at Raymond’s club La Martinique, while Peggy arrives disguised as a blonde, Raymond’s weakness. She is able to make her way past his bodyguard to Raymond’s office, and inquires about Stark’s invention: molecular nitramene. She tries to seduce Raymond for the formula, but he kisses her and gets inadvertently knocked out by her lipstick, which doubles as a sedative. She then opens his safe to find that the formula has already been turned into a weapon. She calls Jarvis, and they both realize that the bomb is now ready to go off, and she now needs to deactivate it. As this occurs, Agent Thompson and his team arrive at the club. As Raymond’s bodyguard shows up to warn him about the SSR agents, Peggy overpowers him and sneaks out while a man in a green suit heads up the stairs to see Raymond. When Raymond wakes up, he panics when he sees the safe open, but is then killed by the man in the green suit. Peggy manages to sneak out past Thompson and heads home, unaware that she has been followed out by the man in the green suit.

When Peggy arrives at the apartment, she starts working to deactivate the bomb, and manages to do so. Unfortunately, when she steps out of the bathroom, she finds that Colleen has been killed, and the man the green suit is there with a gun. She notices he has a scar on his neck where his voice box is, rendering him unable to speak, and manages to push him out a window, but he disappears. The next day she reports the news of the night’s events to Jarvis, berating herself for getting Colleen killed. Jarvis consoles her, telling her she’s a credit to her profession and capable of doing such good. He takes her to meet Dr. Anton Vanko at Stark Industries, who informs them of what the bomb is made of, and where production can be traced: Roxxon Oil Refinery. He always warns them that the bomb, while no longer volatile, is still active, releasing Vita-Rays. This prompts Peggy to search for Steve Rogers’ file at SSR HQ, and is interrupted by Agent Sousa. He cheers her up, and she puts away Steve’s picture before pulling out what she was really looking for. Meanwhile, the man in the green suit tells his superiors about Peggy’s interference and requests permission to terminate her, which he is granted.

Peggy and Jarvis head to Roxxon Oil, and Peggy sneaks inside the facility alone. There, she discovers that the facility is mass-producing the nitramine weapons. Unfortunately, as Jarvis tries to warn Peggy via radio, it gives away her position in the factory, but she is able to subdue most of the factory workers, save for the silent Leet Brannis, who reveals a whole truck full on the nitramine bombs, as well as the same scar on his neck as the man in the green suit. He uses a special machine to speak to Peggy, informing her that he is just a businessman that sells to people who murder, and that Leviathan is coming. He then lets one of the bombs loose, giving her 30 seconds to get out of the way. She is able to escape into the car with Jarvis before the factory explodes, and the pair marvel at the destruction. Meanwhile, back at SSR HQ, Dooley and Thompson talk about Raymond’s murder when they get the call that Roxxon Oil has been blown up, and that the building is just gone. The next day, Peggy and Jarvis debrief on what she had been told about Leviathan, and Jarvis heads out to check Stark’s files. Afterwards, Peggy manages to stop Angie’s harasser from doing further damage, while Jarvis gets on the phone with Stark, and agrees that she will be an excellent choice.